The simple guide to
online shopping

Step 3: Evaluating online merchants (a.k.a.,
the boring part)

Okay, so youve done your
research and are champing at the bit to spend your money just whoa there, Speedy!
Before you go transmitting your credit card number over copper and fiber, we need to find
out a couple of things from our prospective vendor:

Investigate the merchants policies/terms & conditions: merchant policies are
their warranty on sale and service. The primary policy you want to see is their return
policy. Some evil merchants will charge you a restocking fee for returning items even if
they are defective. As youll see, most merchants will charge a restocking fee for
return of items that are not defective, its just a fact of life. I have
seen restocking fees as high as 18% - Ouch! This is one reason why product research is so
important - Make sure you know what you want. By the way, this policy of charging
restocking fees is not exclusive to online merchants. Most local retailers selling
computer peripherals and consumer electronics now charge restocking fees as well.

If its too hard to find a merchants policies on their web site or if their
return policy states that they charge a restocking fee for returns on defective items,
bump them from your List of possible vendors.

Make sure the merchant lists their customer service telephone numbers, customer service
e-mail addresses, and the full company name and address on their web site. Dont be
shy about giving them a call just to test their responsiveness. I assure you, customer
service reps enjoy nothing more than being called by non-customers testing their
responsiveness... Some comparison search engines, like CNETs Killerapp.com and
Shopper.com, will provide you with the Customer Service information as well.

If you cannot find customer service information on the merchants site then they
either dont have it listed or are making it practically impossible to find. In
either case they obviously value their privacy so dont disturb them with your
purchase - just dump them from your list.

Many small, online merchants sell items they buy from auction sites and from returned
inventory to manufacturers. A percentage of these items are factory remanufactured, which
means that the item was opened and may or may not have been used by a customer. It also
means that the manufacturer has tested and spruced up the item so that it meets their
quality specs, then resold it to marketplace with a limited manufacturers warranty.
Auction sites like Onsale.com and Ubid.com will list whether an item being sold is new or
factory remanufactured. Online merchants typically will not unless you phone and
ask and be prepared for a runaround.

I have purchased factory-remanufactured goods for myself, work and for family and friends.
Everything I have purchased has looked and worked as good as new and no one I know
including myself has ever had problems with these items. If you are hesitant about buying
factory-remanufactured items give the merchant you are interested in a call.

Finally, we come to the last and most tedious task of all. Before we finally open our
wallets we might want to investigate our prospective merchants using a one of the Business evaluation tools on the Internet and provided to
you in the Summary of links:

The Better Business Bureau:

The Better Business Bureau database of members is now online.
The BBB is a voluntary organization whose members are businesses that meet certain membership criteria. A companys
membership in the BBB is not a 100% guarantee that you will not be ripped off. However, if
you do have a customer service issue that a member company will not resolve, you can file
a complaint with the BBB who will investigate and sometimes attempt to mediate a solution.
Check this link out for more
details. Using this link, you can see what kind of complaints the BBB accepts and how they
handle complaints.

Bizrate.com:

Bizrate.com is a very neat little site that offers customer
reviews of online merchants. These reviews are stored in the Bizrate.com searchable
merchant database. When looking up a merchant the customer ratings are presented in the
form of a Report Card, which rates several shopping categories that range from Ease of
Ordering to Customer Support and Shipping and Handling.

My one problem with this site is that you only get a ratings system and you do not see
customer comments. If a merchant gets a bad rating on something like Customer Service,
its left up to your imagination whether the problem is long telephone wait times for
tech support or generally ripping off their customers.
Bizrate.com has two categories of merchant reviews:

The Bizrate.com Customer Certified Merchant: Bizrate.com has a membership program for
merchants. When a merchant is a Bizrate.com member, customers making purchases on their
web site will be offered the opportunity to take a Bizrate.com survey. This is a
comprehensive survey that rates your buying experience from the merchant. If you choose to
take the survey your data will become part of the Bizrate.com customer survey database for
that merchant. One of the questions on the survey asks for the Expected Time for Delivery
of the purchase, which Bizrate.com will use to generate a follow-up survey, which is sent
to you (the customer) via e-mail. This follow-up survey has questions about your
satisfaction with the shipment of your order, condition of your order, etc.

The Bizrate.com "Staff Reviewed" Merchant: Bizrate.com also independently
surveys online merchants that are not Bizrate.com members. Bizrate.com staff will purchase
items on a merchants site and evaluate their buying experience to create the Report
Card.

ResellerRatings.com:

This site
uses a rating system like Bizrate.com. The big plus about this site is that you can view
customer comments about merchants. The problems with this site? No search engine for its
database (you have to manually scroll through the records!) and survey data is collected
only by customers visiting the site and completing the survey form (no automatic form
generation like those from Bizrate.com member merchants).

All these resources for evaluating merchants are pretty darn handy, but are not
guaranteed to protect you from getting bad service, defective products, or being ripped
off. Using them does, however, cut down the chances of a bad online shopping experience.

Final Thoughts

Wow, stuck it out to the end
Im impressed. Well, why dont I throw you a few more bones?

Here is a tip to save yourself a few more buck when shopping online:

Do the pricing research in Step 2

Evaluate and approve a couple of merchants in Step 3

Call both the merchants you approved and have them compete against each other to get you
a better price. Typically these merchants will give you a total cost to work with (item +
shipping) then theyll start shaving money off the shipping cost. It will save you a
couple of bucks, if you dont mind your item being shipped by Bubbas Shipping
and Live Bait.

In the Summary of links I provide you the basic links for you to begin your
online shopping excursion. Even though my example demonstrates what great pricing you can
get by using these links, you may be able to find even better deals:

Word-of-Mouth:

You may know a friend, or a friend of a friend, who has been
shopping online since the advent of HTTPS. They probably know some great places to shop
online.

Ars Technica and many other
computing sites have online forums that discuss hardware issues. Hop onto these forums and
dont be afraid to ask folks where they shop online.

Newsgroups:

I used to be able to recommend Usenet newsgroups but that place has
become so filled with spam and merchant postings that it is a pain to try figure who the
real posters from the merchants hunting for business. The explanation of newsgroups is a
huge topic onto itself so Ill only mention; if you are familiar with newsgroups and
are comfortable using then trying posting your shopping inquires there. You should expect
that 80%+ of your responses are from merchants who constantly prowl the newsgroups looking
for inquires like yours.

Become a Reseller:

Now here is an idea for the super aggressive, must have the
lowest price possible, shopping fiend. Why pay retail when you can get the same low prices
that merchants get. Now, if there any requests for details on how to become a reseller I
would be glad to research and include this information in a section of its own but
just take into account a few gotchas:

Most large manufacturers will offer discounts to resellers only on bulk purchases
ranging from quantities of 100+ to 1000+.

You need to register as a business in your state of residence to receive a Federal Tax
ID, which manufacturers require before considering you a reseller. What this means is; no
more EZ tax forms for you buddy. You have just graduated to the bulky tax forms with
labels that read something like 7890HS (Schedule Z) Business Withholding Expense Reporting
(Part 1) Blah Blah Blah.

I could be wrong on this one, but I believe that most states require that you have
Liability Insurance for your business no matter how small.

The IRS has a useful
site with information on starting and operating a small business. Its a good
starter guide for anyone interested in becoming a reseller and wanting to a make a small
business out of it.

So, to wrap up

If you are shopping for consumer electronics or computer products you will always beat
retail by intelligently shopping online period!

Finally, I can say that after
reviewing those Sony camcorders and seeing the prices that I can get online, I really,
really, really want one Hey, if my wife is reading this, please can I have one,
please???!!!